


Perfect Strangers

by SummerFrost



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (Past) Painful Sex, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Coming Out, Communication, Explicit Consent, First Time, Internalized Homophobia, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Queer boys talking about their feelings at 2 AM, Truth or Dare, and then turning those feelings into sex, continuous consent, past bullying, sex positivity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-18 22:36:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9405863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerFrost/pseuds/SummerFrost
Summary: Bitty never imagined he'd be pouring out secrets to Kent Parson, but here he is: curled up on the couch like it's housing his confessional, caught up in that strange late-night energy that makes honesty feel almost easy.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goldstandard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldstandard/gifts).



> odsifgjpearoifsvk this was supposed to be shipped-goldstandard's Christmas present but then life happened and now it's the end January so...this is her "congrats on surviving the first month of 2017" present?? I hope you like it <3
> 
> Hugeeeee thank you to ice-and-lights for her awesome beta and cheerread. Your enthusiasm heals my soul <3
> 
> Title from Perfect Strangers by Jonas Blue!

Bitty gives up on standing outside Jack’s door somewhere around two AM. He goes back to his room, records a vlog post he’ll probably just delete in the morning, and abandons his quest for sleep less than fifteen minutes later. He knocks on Jack’s door one last time, just to be really sure, and trudges downstairs to check on the state of the Haus.

It isn’t pretty. Nursey is passed out by the stairs with…leaves in his hair? Chowder and Farmer are both curled up in the same armchair and Dex is leaned up against their feet, mouth open and snoring gently. The floor is sticky and littered with red Solo cups, not all of them empty, and Bitty can see at least two condom wrappers, and—

_ Fuck,  _ thinks Bitty.

“Fuck,” says Kent Parson, who’s just stumbled in from the kitchen with a bottled water in his hand.

Bitty’s nostrils flare and he tries to keep his voice low so he doesn’t wake the others. “What in the hell are you still doing here?”

Parse gestures with his water bottle like it holds the answers. “Um, sorry, fuck, I just—I’m too drunk to drive so I was just gonna sit a while and sober up but—I thought everyone was sleeping—I’ll go out and wait in the car, I guess.” He looks deflated, a popped-balloon of a person with a furrowed forehead and red, tired eyes. Before—before Jack and the yelling and the other things Bitty wasn’t meant to hear—he had a quiet vibrancy that diffused throughout the room.

Bitty knows what it’s like to feel cut open and dumped out. “No, um, you can stay. It’s pretty cold out, so.” He crosses his arms and sighs when Parse just stares at him blankly. “I’ll sit with you, if you want.”

“Oh, uh, cool. Thanks.” Parse plops down on the couch (ew) while Bitty wanders into the kitchen and comes back with a water bottle of his own. He wrinkles his nose, but this late at night the couch is marginally better than the floor, so he sits on the opposite end from Parse and curls up against the armrest.  

Bitty fights the urge to check Twitter— _ SOS, stuck on couch w Kent Parson!! _ —would be a great but entirely inappropriate tweet and really, he knows if he opens the app he won’t have the self-control to avoid it. So instead he just fiddles with the cap of his water bottle and squints in the general direction of Nursey’s hair.

Parse clears his throat. “So—” Bitty jumps and turns to look at him. “Sorry. Uh. Just, about earlier—”

“Let’s not,” Bitty interrupts hurriedly, biting his lip and looking away. He kind of wants to get up and go to bed, but he’s not really in the business of abandoning sad people, so he settles for thumping his head against the gross couch and instantly regrets it because  _ good Lord is that a damp spot? _

“Yeah, fuck, okay,” Parse sighs and scrubs at his face. “Okay.” He seems incapable of hushing up, though, which is usually Bitty’s job. “So, then…how’s your season going?”

“Oh, it’s been good, thanks. It’s early, obviously, but the coaches think we can make a playoff run again.”

Parse nods. “Cool. Uh, you’re a forward, right?”

Bitty snorts. “What gave it away?”

Parse’s eyes narrow like he’s about to spit something back, but he changes his mind and asks, “Center or wing?” instead.

“Wing, mostly.”

“Uh, cool.” Another awkward silence, which leaves Bitty hopeful that maybe they can pass the rest of the night in peace, but then Parse changes tactics and asks, “What’re you studying?”

_ Other than a lesson in patience?  _ Bitty sighs. “American Studies.”

Parse laughs. “Not gonna lie, I kinda thought that was a fake major they made up for movies an’ shit.”

“It’s real,” Bitty says tersely, and Parse seems rebuked but not inclined to apologize. Normally, Bitty would go off on a tangent on his concentration in Food and Culture, or how he’s reluctantly considering adding a Business minor so he can be a little bit prepared to open that bakery he’s been dreaming of, but—he’s not really interesting in baring his soul to Kent Parson, of all people.

So no one says anything for a few minutes, until Parse honest-to-God throws up his arms and asks, “Wanna play a game?”

It’s not like Bitty’s life can get any weirder than these stilted awkward silences, right? “Uh, sure. I think the beer pong—”

“Nah,” Parse laughs quietly, “like a talking game. Never Have I Ever or Truth or Dare or some shit.”

Oh, never mind, that’s weirder. Bitty raises his eyebrows. “Um, I guess? Isn’t that normally a group thing?”

“Yeah. Know anyone else who wants in?” Parse asks drily, gesturing at the sleeping frogs littered around the room. Bitty just rolls his eyes. “Looks like it’s just me and you then—Bitty, right?”

“Yeah.” Bitty takes a deep breath. “So what do you wanna play?”

“Well Bitty, full disclosure: I pretty much always lose at Never Have I Ever and I pretty much always win at Truth or Dare.”

Bitty peers at Parse, his rumpled shirt and mussed up blond hair poking through his snapback, the sullen look he hasn’t managed to shake off his face. “You look like you could use a win.”

Parse huffs out a laugh and takes a long drink of water. “Yep, that I do, yeah. Well, then, couple of things: my dares are usually weird shit or sexual, but since I’m drunk and you kinda look like you still wanna strangle me, I’ll stick to weird. I like to talk about truths after they get answered, but you don’t have to answer after the first question if you don’t wanna. If you don’t want your dare you can trade it for a truth and vice versa.”

“Um.” Bitty giggles despite himself. “You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

“I played a lot in high school,” Parse explains with a shrug. “You got anything to add?”

Bitty bites his lip. “Not really? I, um—I don’t really play?”

“No worries. I’ll start. Truth or dare, Bits?”

“Dare.”

“Sweet.” Parse falls silent and ponders for a few moments. “Hmm. Are you too drunk to try and do a handstand?”

Bitty laughs. “Prob’ly not?”

“Do a handstand.”

Bitty rolls his eyes and carefully sets down his water bottle. He shrugs out of his sweatshirt and takes a moment to find a relatively non-sticky part of the floor before he bends down and lifts up onto his hands. It’s been a while since he’s tried to do one, but back in his figure skating days Bitty used to do tricks like this with the girls for fun. It turns out it’s still pretty easy—maybe even easier with his new hockey muscles.

“Shit, that’s cool,” Parse whispers, and he even sounds like he means it. “Can you like, fucking walk on your hands and shit too?”

Bitty huffs, but walks himself back over to the couch before righting, lowering carefully to the ground and then climbing back onto the couch. “Satisfied?” he drawls.

“Very,” Parse says, and then he winks which is both flustering and annoying as hell.

Bitty tries to ignore him, taking a moment to shrug his sweatshirt back on, and asks, “Truth or Dare?”

Parse smirks. “Dare.” He already seems more relaxed, like he’s settling into something easy and familiar.

It takes a few moments of pondering for Bitty to admit defeat. “Um, I don’t really know what to ask?”

“That’s cool. You could like, dare me to mess with one of your teammates or something.” Parse tilts his head towards the pile of sleeping frogs.

Biting his lip, Bitty considers. “Oh, I guess—there’s a marker for the whiteboard in the kitchen. You could draw on someone without waking them up?”

“Hell yeah.” Parse vaults over the back of the coach for some reason, instead of just walking around like a normal person, and comes back with the black dry erase marker after some rustling through the drawers. “Okay, who’s gonna be least pissed off in the morning?”

“Chowder,” Bitty says, pointing him out. “Draw a shark—he’ll actually probably like that, the sweet child.”

The next minute is tense as Parse creeps over, marker uncapped, freezing at one point when Chowder grumbles in his sleep and changes positions. Bitty giggles and Parse glares at him good-naturedly. After Chowder resettles, Parse leans over and gently starts to draw; Bitty holds his breath until Parse finishes and bolts back across the room, plopping onto the couch and fist-pumping in triumph.

Bitty stares at Chowder’s face and chirps, “That’s the worst drawn shark I’ve ever seen.”

Parse snorts. “Like you could do better.”

Which is how Bitty ends up wrestling with Kent Parson for a dry erase marker, on his least favorite piece of furniture in the world, at two in the morning. He’s pretty sure Parse lets him win, by the dramatic way he throws his hands up in defeat and offers up his cheek as a canvas.

Bitty sticks his tongue out while he draws and Parse keeps giggling so he takes his free hand and cups Parse’s chin to hold him still. “Stop moving,” he scolds. “Good Lord, you really  _ are  _ drunk.”

Parse just winks, the big jerk.

“Okay, done,” Bitty announces proudly, but then he kind of freezes because now that he’s not focused on drawing, he realizes he’s got half his body pressed up against Parse (who is really, really warm for some reason) and a hand on his face and wow, Parse has  _ really _ pretty eyes. Shit.

Parse blinks and the spell breaks. Bitty scoots hurriedly back across the couch while Parse takes out his phone to use the camera to inspect his new facial art. “Okay, fuck, this is way better than mine,” he says, and it’s not even that great of a compliment but Bitty still blushes a little. And that’s a problem, because yeah Parse is super attractive and sure Bitty was probably kind of definitely accidentally flirting with him just now, but that doesn’t change how—

“Yo, Earth to Bits?” Parse is leaning over, waving a hand in front of Bitty’s face, sporting an amused smirk.

Bitty rubs a hand over his eyes. “Sorry, what?”

“Truth or dare, man.”

“Truth,” Bitty answers, and mercifully Parse leans back against his side of the coach.

“Why don’t you ever play this game?”

So yeah, Bitty needs to pick ‘dare’ more often. “You mean besides right now?” he chirps, mostly just stalling. It seems to work, because Parse laughs and kicks his legs up onto the sofa. His feet nudge up against Bitty’s thighs. “Um,  _ ew,  _ your shoes are gross. Off.”

Parse sighs dramatically and kicks off his Converse, then digs his toes under Bitty’s thigh, like that’s a completely normal and not at all overly-familiar thing to do. “There. Now are you gonna answer your question, or should I come up with a dare?”

“Um, n-no, I just—,” Bitty stammers and finishes quietly, “it’s, um—I’m gay? And that wasn’t exactly easy, um, bein’ that way where I’m from, and Truth or Dare was always about kissin’ each other and who had a crush on who, so.”

Parse wiggles his toes. “That sounds rough. I’m sorry, Bits.”

“Thanks. It was—it’s better now, here.” He feels Parse’s eyes on him but doesn’t look up.

“Were you out?” Parse asks softly.

Bitty can’t help but laugh. “God no! I mean, I’m sure people had their suspicions—Lord knows they treated me like it—but no, and my family still doesn’t know. Just my team and—and you, now.”

“Shit,” Parse breathes, and Bitty looks up with apprehension, “you didn’t have to—I’m sorry if that’s not something you were ready to talk about. You didn’t have to tell me.”

Bitty bites his lip; he thinks he might chew through it by the end of the night. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to—”

“You’re—” Parse frowns. “Why are you apologizing?”

“I—if I made you uncomfortable?” Bitty realizes he’s shrunk away instinctively, folded himself against the edges of the couch. He can’t bring himself to relax out of it.

“If you—Christ, seriously?” Parse laughs, which is really more reassuring that it should be. “So uh,” he looks around the room, like maybe someone’s going to jump out from behind the furniture. “I’m bi. If you made me uncomfortable I’m a pretty big fucking hypocrite, dude.”

It takes an embarrassing amount of seconds for Bitty’s brain to work through that—all the way from,  _ Kent Parson isn’t straight  _ to  _ that explains what I heard upstairs  _ to  _ oh my God what if all the rumors were true.  _ “Oh.”

“Yeah so like,” Parse gestures vaguely with his hands, “what I meant was I felt bad you felt pressured into coming out to me? Not like, that it was bad you told me.”

Which, yeah, okay, but— “Were you and Jack—?”

“Um.” Parse crosses his arms and looks away. “That puts me in a really fucking awkward position.”

Bitty cringes. “Right, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think—I just, you know I heard you earlier and—oh my God I’m so sorry I shouldn’t have asked, I just thought—I’ve always kind of wondered and I guess if he wanted me to know he would’ve told me, but—I guess it’s just that I—”

“You like him and you wanna know if he could like you back?” Parse’s voice is so much softer than Bitty expected. Even when he’s excited, or saying something important. It’s nothing like the booming theatrics of Holster or the brash charisma of Shitty. It’s a private, quiet thing that makes closeness feel safe—better than safe, maybe, if there are more important things. It’s going to be a problem.

Bitty blushes and looks down. “Um, yeah.”

“Well, Bits,” Parse says, sinking deeper against the armrest and tucking his feet farther under Bitty’s thigh, “I sure as hell know what that feels like. My fucking condolences.”

Maybe it was supposed to be sarcastic, but somehow Bitty doesn’t get the feeling that it is. When Parse doesn’t say anything else, Bitty asks, “Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

Bitty quirks an eyebrow. “Um, are you just picking whatever option I pick?”

“Maybe,” Parse says, wiggling his eyebrows back, and Bitty snorts.

“Okay, fine. Um. Does your team know you’re bi?”

“Yeah, mostly? Just my buddies knew first and then I basically just stopped hiding it and told the truth to anyone who asked. Honestly, I think most of the league knows.” Parse smirks to himself, like maybe he’s remembering something.

“Was it—” Bitty trips over his words, he’s so nervous to hear the answer. “Um, I guess—like, are people mostly okay with it?”

Parse nods, his smirk shifting briefly into a smile. “Most guys have been fine. There’s the occasional asshole, obviously, but most of the captains are good guys and they keep that shit in line.” Then he winks and his voice turns husky. “And I get laid like, so fucking much now that guys know I’m down for it.”

Bitty swallows hard and tries to figure out what to say to that, but Parse apparently isn’t done talking. “Like, before it was always the whole ‘is he or isn’t he’ thing, yeah? And now like, last week this guy on the Kings just fucking walked up to me at the bar after our game and asked to suck my dick.”

“Oh my God,” Bitty says, because now he’s picturing Parse naked, leaned up against a wall, and— “Oh my God,” he says again, for good measure.

“Anyway, truth or dare?” Parse asks nonchalantly, like he hasn’t just short-circuited Bitty’s poor little gay brain.

Bitty needs to be no longer sitting on this couch. “Dare.”

Immediately, Parse asks, “Is that your butter in the fridge?”

“Um, yes?”

“Eat a bunch of butter.”

Bitty tries really hard not to balk. “Like, an entire stick?”

“Ew, no.” Parse wrinkles up his nose. “Like, to one of those big lines on the wrapper.”

“…a tablespoon?”

Parse shrugs. “Sure.”

“You’re…really weird,” Bitty whispers as he stands, like he can’t believe he’s even saying it.

“Yep.” Parse follows Bitty into the kitchen and hops up onto the counter. Bitty nudges his legs out of the way to grab a butter knife and pulls out the leftover half-stick of butter from the last pie crust he made.

“Can I like, cut it up into smaller pieces or do I have to put it all in my mouth at once?” He asks, slicing off a tablespoon’s worth.

Parse apparently seriously considers the request. “All at once is preferred.”

Bitty huffs a little but manages it anyway, and vows to maybe consider putting a little less butter in his next pie crust because good Lord he can feel his arteries clogging already just from this. “Okay, that was weird. Truth or dare?”

“Dare, duh.”

Bitty rolls his eyes and peeks into the refrigerator as he puts the butter away. “Ooh, see how many strawberries you can fit into your mouth at once.”

“Zero,” Parse deadpans. “I’m allergic to strawberries.”

“Seriously?”

“Dead serious.” Parse smirks. “As in, I’ll be seriously fucking dead if I eat a strawberry.”

Pouting, Bitty cracks the fridge open and leans down to look inside. “Ugh, fine. I guess you get a pass then, Parson.” He hums to himself as he scans the shelves for an alternative food. Suddenly, there’s hot breath on his neck and Parse is bracketed around him, a bicep just barely brushed against a shoulder, delicate inches between his hand and Parse’s, braced higher up on the door. Bitty jumps.

Parse, unfazed, asks, “Whatcha looking for?”

_ Are you doing this on purpose?  _ Bitty wants to scream. Instead, he sucks in a breath and answers, “A different food for your dare.”

“Wow,” Parse laughs, “you really wanna put something in my mouth.”

It has to be on purpose. It  _ has  _ to be. “You did it first,” Bitty grumbles, but he gives up and ducks under Parse’s arm to get away.

“Hm. Ice cubes.”

“What?”

Parse is already opening up the freezer door and pulling out the ice cube tray. “Ice cubes. In my mouth. Dare accepted.”

“I didn’t—that’s going to be so cold!”

“Yep.” And then Parse is popping out the ice from the tray and sliding the cubes into his mouth, slowly, one at a time, so that they wet his lips just a little on the way in.

It shouldn’t be a sexy thing. It  _ isn’t.  _ Except for some awful reason it kind of is, and then it gets worse because the cold hits and Parse’s face scrunches up, and it’s so fucking adorable, and Bitty must have done something really, really bad in a past life to deserve this.

_ Dear Lord,  _ Bitty prays,  _ I am so sorry for whatever I did please make this stop please don’t let me get a boner watching Kent Parson eat ice in my kitchen at two in the morning please amen. _

Parse spits a mouthful of half-melted ice cubes into the sink. His tongue must be numb, because his words are a little gummed up. “So like, one time I ate a bunch of snow as a kid? And this was worse.”

“Um,” Bitty points out, “Those don’t seem all that related?”

Unhelpfully, Parse just segues into, “Truth or dare?”

“Lord. Dare, I guess.”

“Perfect,” Parse says, and then he takes out his phone which is not at all encouraging. “Prank call this number.” He hands over his cell and Bitty sighs.

“How are you coming up with these so quickly?”

Parse shrugs and pokes at Bitty’s phone. “This is gonna be great.”

Bitty bites his lip and pulls out his phone, dialing the number Parse gave him. The contact is just listed as Swoops, so Bitty assumes he’s about to be talking to someone on the Aces. He puts it on speaker phone. “Oh my God,” he whispers in a panic while it rings, “what do I say?”

“What do you—Christ,” Parse laughs, “ask ‘is your refrigerator running?’”

Bitty glares. “That doesn’t make any—”

“Hullo? Who is this?”

“Oh my God. Um,” Bitty stammers, and Parse dissolves into giggles almost immediately. “Is your—is your refrigerator runnin’?”

The man on the other end doesn’t seem to think anything is funny. “What? Is my—is this 2005?”

Bitty giggles now too, mostly because Parse has completely lost it and is doubled over with wheezing laughter, a hand braced on Bitty’s shoulder to keep himself upright. “Answer the question please, sir.”

The man on the other end sighs exaggeratedly. “Yes.”

“Oh, I remember this now,” Bitty whispers excitedly and Parse rolls his eyes, smirking. “Then—oh my God, stop—” he stifles a yelp when Parse sinks to the ground and tries to pull him down with him. “Then you better go catch it!”

“Who—did Parse put you up to this? Parser, you fucker, get back to this fucking hotel room—”

Bitty clicks off the phone and finally lets Parse tug him down to the kitchen floor, which is blessedly less sticky than the den. Still fighting back laughter, Parse leans his head back against the cabinets.

Bitty points out, a little nervously, “Um, he sounded actually kind of mad.”

“Nah.” Parse smirks. “We’ve got a prank war and now he’s losing.”

“Oh, alright.” That’s obviously not what Bitty meant and they both know it, but Bitty just dutifully ignores it—the same way he’s ignoring the fact that their arms are pressed together and he can smell Parse’s cologne—and asks, “Truth or Dare?”

Parse, predictably, chooses dare, and Bitty is prepared. “Okay, you have to—” he giggles, “you have to go to the house across the street and knock on their door and um—um, ask for a banana, I guess.”

“Weird. I love it.” Parse is grinning when he hops up to his feet.

Bitty had assumed he’d get to wait at the door but Parse grabs him by the wrist and pulls him along. “Oh my—what’re you doin’?”

“Don’t you wanna hear what happens?” Parse asks with a smirk.

Bitty doesn’t really have a clever answer to that, so he just goes along with it and ends up crouched in some bushes near the lacrosse house. Parse knocks on the door, loudly and continuously until someone answers. A tall redhead—Chad? Bitty thinks his name is Chad—opens the door groggily. “Hullo? Who’re you?”

“Hey. Can I—” Parse nearly cracks, a little smile slipping onto his face. “Can I have a banana?”

“Uh. What?”

“A banana. Like the yellow fruit? Can I have one?”

Someone from inside the house shouts, “Just give him the fucking banana!”

“Um. One second, bro.” Possibly Named Chad disappears and comes back a few minutes later with an overripe specimen. “Uh, why—just, why?”

“It’s my kink,” Parse tells him, entirely straight-faced.

“Um. Right,” Chad says, and he closes the door impressively quickly.

Bitty bursts into the laughter he’s been holding in during the entire exchange, dropping down into the dirt and clutching his sides. Parse wheezes, “Fucking Christ. We gotta—Bits, we gotta go, man!” and tries to lift Bitty to his feet.

“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” Bitty admits, standing clumsily and running with Parse back across the street. They creep back into the Haus slower, careful to avoid making too much noise.

“The night is young, my friend.” Parse flops down onto the couch, sprawled across half of it with his legs hooked over an armrest and his head pillowed on a cushion. Bitty sits gingerly in the remaining space. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth, I guess.”

Parse is silent for a moment. He peers up at Bitty, his head tilted back to make the angle work. “What’s your favorite sex thing?”

_ Oh God.  _ Bitty bites his lip for a long moment. “Um, I—I don’t—I haven’t, um, tried that much?”

“That’s cool. What’ve you done?”

“I, um—blowjobs are nice?” Parse is watching him keenly, and Bitty can’t handle the casual intensity of it. He looks away, stares back at Nursey’s leaf-riddled hair.

Parse laughs. “Hell yeah. I’d fucking drink to that if I wasn’t trying to get sober.” He pauses a moment, and when he realizes Bitty isn’t going to say anything else he asks, “What do you wanna try?”

“God, I—I don’t,” Bitty stammers, and Parse somehow slides lower along the couch until the top of his head is smushed up against Bitty’s thigh, which really doesn’t help him feel  _ less  _ flustered. But at the same time—it’s not like Bitty has a wealth of people he can talk to about stuff like this; he spends so much time with the hockey team, and Lardo is great but she’s had  _ slightly  _ different life experiences, being a girl and all, and—

“You don’t gotta tell me,” Parse reminds him gently.

Bitty nods. “No, it’s—just workin’ up the nerve, I guess.” He laughs softly and finally manages to admit, “I—I want to—I mean, I’ve  _ tried  _ before but I couldn’t—I just—and maybe it’s just not for me but—”

Parse pats his knee. “Breathe, Bits.”

Bitty sucks in a deep gasp of air, and the words rush out all at once after that. “Bottoming? I’ve tried and I always get so tense and it  _ hurts  _ and I—I have to stop and I kind of wonder, just—how, you know?”

Expression thoughtful, Parse hums in sympathy. “I mean, like you said—‘s not for everyone. Like if you don’t like it—”

“I want to, though,” Bitty admits quietly. “Like it, I mean.”

Parse sits up—or tries to—he’s surprisingly uncoordinated about it—and asks, “Why? No one’s gonna take your gay card away ‘cause you don’t like it up the ass.”

The crudeness startles a choking laugh out of Bitty and he has to take a moment to compose himself before he can explain, “Um. It’s—I know that, but—it just. Seems like it would be, um—really intimate? Having someone—um, s-someone inside you. And I’d—I want that.”

“Mm, I get that.” Parse leans his head back against the top of the couch, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “Wanna know what I think?”

Bitty rests his cheek against the couch and watches Parse’s face. “Um, sure?”

“It takes like, a fuck load of trust to bottom for someone.” Parse closes his eyes and cracks his back. Bitty tries not to find the way he arches, hips canted up a little, ridiculously attractive. “You gotta be like, really relaxed, you know? So—like, if you’re like stressed or scared it’s not gonna do it for ya.”

“Oh, um. Yeah.” Bitty turns away a little, stares at his hands in his lap.

“Have you tried it—uh, on yourself?” Parse asks, and Bitty can feel his eyes on him, but he doesn’t look up.

Bitty stammers, “Um. I’ve, uh—with my fingers? But I haven’t, um—nothing bigger.”

Parse prods gently, “Did you like it?”

Bitty’s face is so red he’s sure the heat is radiating off it. “Y-yeah,” he admits—and it feels more like a confession than it probably should, with the way his hands fiddle with the strings of his sweatshirt and he can’t look Parse in the eye.

“That’s not, like, a thing to be ashamed of, you know,” Parse tells him softly, because apparently he can read Bitty’s damn mind now—or maybe it’s just written all over his face. “I, uh—I finger myself too. And I use a dildo sometimes.”

And, oh—good Lord, now Bitty is embarrassed for a whole other reason because—because he’s thinking about what it would look like—Parse stretched out on a bed, working a dildo in and out of himself. Bitty wonders what Parse’s face is like when he comes, if his nose scrunches up or his mouth hangs open a little, if—

“Bitty?” Parse puts a hand on Bitty’s shoulder, causing him to jump. “Sorry. Uh, you okay?”

“Um, yeah, I just—” Bitty stops abruptly, unsure how to unpack everything he’s feeling—and he’s not sure Parse would want to know that Bitty was just fantasizing about him, so—

Parse asks wryly, “You, uh—you don’t have a lot of gay friends, do you?” His hand is still on Bitty’s shoulder and it feels—nicer than it should.

“Um, not really. Why?”

“Uh,” Parse laughs, “You just…seem like you’ve never talked about this before?”

Bitty blushes, which is starting to feel like his normal state of being. “I—I haven’t. Um. Pretty much ever? So—thank you.”

Parse squeezes Bitty’s shoulder. “Yeah, ‘course.”

They sit in silence for a while, Bitty painfully aware of Parse’s hand on him, the way their thighs are nearly touching on the couch. Eventually he remembers to ask, “Um. Truth or dare?”

Parse answers, “Truth.”

Bitty picks at a loose thread on a couch cushion. “Um. What was—your first time like?”

Parse whistles and flops sideways, cushioning his head on the far armrest and propping his feet up on Bitty’s lap. “So, like, contextually I assume you mean the first time I bottomed? Cause I had a shit-ton of sex before that.”

Fighting the inexplicable and wildly inappropriate urge to take Parse’s feet into his hands, trace his fingers over his ankle bones or along his arches, Bitty nods mutely.

“Right, so. Uh, it wasn’t—great.” Parse pushes a long stream of air out of his nose and cranes his neck back over the couch. “It—we were dumb kids—teenagers—and we didn’t really like, research like we should’ve. It—” Parse pauses, laughs self-deprecatingly. “I don’t wanna freak you out, okay?”

Bitty’s not so much freaking out as being swarmed with guilt, because Parse looks the most uncomfortable he’s been since Bitty first came down here, and that’s not what he wanted at all. “I’m—I’m okay. But you don’t have to—um, you don’t have to keep talking about it.”

“Nah, um. I was just gonna say, like—it hurt, you know? And I didn’t even come close to coming, and—” Parse hesitates, like he’s trying to figure out how to phrase what he’s about to say. “My partner, uh—he got freaked out when he realized he hurt me and left.”

Inappropriate be damned, Bitty puts a hand on Parse’s foot and squeezes in comfort. “I—I’m so sorry, that sounds—what a  _ jerk.” _

Parse’s eyes narrow and his tone turns weirdly defensive. “He was scared. It wasn’t his fault.”

Bitty wants to argue, but he’s not exactly a confrontational person in general and he’s not about to start now, so instead he points out, “Doesn’t make it fair to you.”

Something pained flashes across Parse’s face and he laughs—a hollow, disbelieving sound. “Yeah, that it doesn’t. But look, it uh—it got better, yeah? I’ve had plenty of good sex since then.”

“With, um—with him?” Bitty asks, worrying at his lip.

Parse purses his lips together and stares up at the ceiling. The silence hangs heavy for a long time. “Truth or dare?”

Bitty runs his thumb across the side of Parse’s heel. “Truth.”

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” Parse asks, pushing up on his forearms to look right at Bitty. His eyes are clear and dark in the low light of the Haus, not quite brooding but something close—something raw and unnerving and too much, and Bitty could be stared at like this forever and still never settle back into his skin.

It’s a hasty cataloging of sins, the way Bitty’s eyelids flutter shut and he looks back on his life, combing through murky threads of guilt for something to pin on his chest like a badge for Kent Parson to inspect. He keeps dancing around what he knows the answer will be—knew from the start—like maybe he can uncover something paradoxically both more and less laden with shame—a cleaner sin to present.

Bitty finds nothing, of course, and finally he answers, “Um. When I was in middle school, I—I got bullied a lot. And one day, I—I’d stayed late, after school and I was walking home and I saw—um, sorry, I—I’ve never told anyone this?”

“It’s okay,” Parse says gently, nodding at Bitty to continue.

“Um. I saw some of the boys who bullied me pickin’ on someone else. They were shoving him, throwing his stuff everywhere and I—I didn’t do anything. I just—I didn’t help him get his stuff or tell them to stop, or get anyone to help.” Bitty squeezes his eyes shut and pretends he doesn’t feel the start of tears pricking out. Voice trembling, he finishes, “I just—I kept my head down and kept walkin’ and I—I th-thanked God that it wasn’t happening to me.”

Parse is next to Bitty on the couch with an arm around his shoulders. Bitty’s not sure when that happened, but he leans in the touch and can’t bring himself to feel bad about it. “You were just a kid,” Parse says, like maybe Bitty hadn’t realized. “You were scared.”

Bitty shrugs helplessly, throat working around words he can’t quite seem to spit out. “They locked me in a supply closet the next week,” he says instead, because it’s not the lesson but the thing that taught it—and that’s an easier thing to regurgitate. “We…moved away after that. I never—stopped bein’ scared.”

There’s apparently no good answer to that, because Parse doesn’t say a thing. He shifts a little, edging into Bitty’s space with his lips parted like he’s found something to say—and then he turns back away, like he’s caught himself out.

“What’s your worst thing?” Bitty asks quietly, eyes feeling dry and too-big in his skull when he looks at Parse.

Parse clears his throat and rasps out, “You were there.” His gaze is fixed straight ahead, at the dark TV or maybe the curtains framing the creaky old pane windows that no one tries to open anymore.

Bitty stares at the curtains too. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth.” Parse’s arm slips off Bitty’s shoulders. His hands settle in his lap.

The curtains are orange but they look brown in the light, an ugly sick color that makes Bitty want to burn them. “Why’d you do it?”

Parse waits so long to answer that Bitty’s sure he’s about to ask for a dare instead. But then he turns slowly, his whole body rotating to face Bitty, and asks with a strangled edge to his voice, “You know how someone just hurts you like, so  _ fucking _ badly all the time, and they don’t even  _ care,  _ and you start thinking maybe they deserve to hurt too?”

Something aches under Bitty’s ribs. He wants to say no, wants to be the boy on the high road, other cheek turned—doesn’t want to be the boy who would’ve hit back if he could. And to anyone else, maybe Bitty would lie. Maybe he’d fake at being pure, act like self-preservation and an overwhelming sense of fear wasn’t what kept his knuckles unbruised in Georgia.

Parse is nearly a perfect stranger—but he’s here, on this couch pouring out his secrets and his hurts and asking Bitty to hold them. Bitty gets the feeling Parse is normally in the business of lying, too. And so Bitty nods.

“That’s why,” Parse says. “Truth or dare?”

When Bitty was a child, he’d wake up for school sometimes to a dense mist covering the neighborhood, so heavy he could feel it under his skin when he walked through it and carried the damp feeling with him for ages. There’s an energy in the room like that now, a thick crackle in the air borne from the oversharing and the little touches and the almost-touches, the fragile camaraderie built in defiance of Bitty’s knee-jerk resentment. He feels the thrum of it in his bones.

“Dare,” he says—maybe to see which half shatters.

Parse sprouts a pleased grin, wicked around the edges. There’s a devious glint back in his eyes that Bitty would never admit to have been missing, if anyone asked. “Go streaking—end of the street and back.”

Bitty blanches. “Wait, um—like, naked?”

Humming thoughtfully, Parse compromises, “You can keep your underwear, I guess.”

“Um.” Bitty worries at his lip and tries to keep his voice from squeaking. “Someone could see me?”

Parse laughs—not unkindly, though. “So, like, one,” he says, holding up his index finger, “It’s like three AM, no one’s awake. And two—” he pauses, holding up a second finger, and leans in a little, voice turning husky. “That’s the fucking thrill of it, Bits.”

Bitty shivers at Parse’s tone, teeth still biting into his bottom lip. “Um, I’ll do it, I just—”

“Want me to do it with you?” Parse offers with a smirk.

“Y-yeah.” Bitty actually really, really does. It kind of surprises him, how nice it feels to have the assurance of Parse next to him.

He’s more than a little self-conscious—and occupied with thanking the Lord he decided to wear nice boxer-briefs tonight—as he strips down, but Parse’s cheeks turn pink in the low light when he turns to look at Bitty, and that feels pretty damn nice.

And Parse—well, Bitty’s seen the ESPN shoot, because he hasn’t been living under a rock—but it’s different in person, and different than the locker room. Because even though Bitty still feels a little guilty for staring, it’s not—it doesn’t feel the same kind of  _ wrong _ —and Parse might even be staring back.

So yeah, Parse is beautiful—sexy, handsome, any number of things—and his abs are dappled by the light from the windows and Bitty can see the faintest shimmer of pale chest hair, plus a trail down from his bellybutton that vanishes into his boxers, and a hundred other details he could keep himself occupied with forever.

Bitty swallows in a mostly failed attempt to fix the dryness in his mouth and says, “Um, ready.”

“Same,” Parse answers, snagging his hat off the top of the couch and fitting it snugly back on his head, which is honestly ridiculous and makes Bitty giggle—to which Parse says, with mock offense, “Hey, don’t chirp the snapback. It’s part of the brand.”

There are an infinite number of things Bitty could say to that—some more substantially more appropriate than others. Mostly, he’s thinking about how the ‘Kent Parson brand’ is something he’s a little more into than he should be, all things considered. So instead, Bitty doesn’t say anything in favor of opening the front door and bracing himself to run.

“Hey, what’s your team name?” Parse asks, apparently not concerned with the fact that the door is opening and Bitty is already shivering.

“Um. The Wellies?”

Parse raises an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“Um, yeah?”

Parse shrugs, grabs Bitty’s hand, and  _ bolts. _

Bitty squeals, stumbling outside and trying to keep pace so Parse doesn’t tear his arm off. “Oh my—”

“Woo! Go Wellies!” Parse cheers, cupping his free hand against his mouth.

“Stop,” Bitty hisses, but the effect is kind of lost considering the wind whipping around their faces. “You’ll wake everyone up.”

Parse ignores him and keeps shouting, eyes bright, grinning while they run. Bitty thinks maybe he hears some people cheering back—athletes who live in the other houses stirred by the commotion and, half-drunk and forever school spirited, joining in—but it’s hard to tell because—

His heart is pounding and the sharp winter air is stinging against his cheeks and his bare feet are hammering against the pavement—the concrete is rough against his skin and it reminds him of childhood, playing barefoot in the street because they lived on a cul-de-sac and there were no cars and that was before he learned bad things could happen—and the adrenaline purges something that was simmering dark in Bitty’s blood.

Bitty lifts his hands into the air and whoops. Parse turns to him and absolutely  _ beams,  _ squeezes Bitty’s hand because he still hasn’t let go and cheers louder. His snapback flies off his head and he turns to look but they don’t stop, just  _ run run run _ with heaving lungs until they reach the end of the street and come to a brief, skidding halt.

Panting, Bitty looks up at Parse. Their eyes meet for half a second and then they’re off again, wheeling around and dashing even faster than before. Parse bends down and snags his hat off the ground, stumbling a little with the change in momentum—Bitty grabs his arm to steady him, pulls him along and pretends this touch couldn’t kill him—that his heart is racing in time with his feet against the sidewalk and the flutter of his lungs, that it isn’t beating for the look on Parse’s face.

All at once they’re back through the front door and collapsing onto the couch, Parse pulling Bitty down with him so that Bitty’s half-sprawled in Parse’s lap, inhaling the same air and crowded up in the same space.

Parse takes his hat and fits it snugly on Bitty’s head. His eyes are dangerous things, bright and burning all at once.

Bitty sucks in a ragged breath and asks, “Truth or dare?”

Their lips are inches apart. Bitty feels the wisp of air when Parse says, “Dare.”

“Kiss me,” Bitty says, and Parse is on him before the words finish leaving his mouth.

It’s soft, trembling, a thing that might be considered chaste if there were more clothes involved or if it was earlier in the night, or if Bitty wasn’t kissing Kent Parson on the couch while Jack was asleep upstairs. So no, there’s no faking at purity—but maybe something tender, something eager and uncertain and delicate in the way Parse kisses, sucking back a little on Bitty’s lip when he finally pulls away.

“Truth or dare?” Parse asks. His voice is scratchy, like it hasn’t been used in hours instead of minutes.

Bitty swallows thickly and tries to breathe through his nose. “Dare.”

Parse kisses him again—deeper this time, his tongue slipping between Bitty’s lips like a homecoming, aching and long-awaited and somehow just the tiniest bit unfamiliar—and moans softly into Bitty’s mouth. He brings a hand to Bitty’s hip and cups the other around Bitty’s cheek, thumb drawing little shivers against the skin.

Bitty buries his hands in Parse’s hair, tugging gently and melting when Parse whimpers quietly at the touch. He breaks the kiss to whisper, “Truth or dare?”

“Dare,” Parse breathes, barely a word, his lips already pressing back against Bitty’s into another kiss.

Bitty pulls Parse on top of him, dropping down onto his back and slipping his hands out of Parse’s hair to grip at his shoulders instead, and whines appreciatively when Parse sinks his weight down. Because—because Parse is  _ hard.  _ Bitty can feel him against his thigh and oh, God, Bitty is hard too—so hard he can barely think, barely breathe, just needs to feel more of—something, anything—and he bucks his hips up to find it.

Parse grinds back against him, panting, sounding like he’s trying to keep his voice down but not doing a particularly good job. He puts his lips up to Bitty’s ear and murmurs, “Pick truth, okay?” Bitty nods, too busy gulping for air to answer. “Truth or dare, Bits?”

“T-truth,” Bitty gasps, fighting to form words while Parse mouths at his neck, teeth nipping gently at the skin.

Parse pushes up onto his forearms a little, so he can get a good look at Bitty’s face. He stops grinding, too, and Bitty’s hips hitch feebly to chase the contact. “Would you—” Parse hesitates, eyes flicking away and back again, voice tentative. “Would you let me be your first?”

The words hover in the air, a nearly physical thing. Bitty looks up at Parse—at the freckled, wide-eyed man with a sloppy head of half-curls and a bared-open soul who seems worlds apart from the Kent Parson who walked away, stone-faced and cold, from how he tore Jack to pieces. If Bitty really took a microscope to himself, maybe he’d find that the two men took up entirely separate spaces in his brain, like they didn’t belong together at all.

In the morning, Bitty’ll have to shove the two back together, like a second-rate song mashup on YouTube where the parts still don’t quite fit. But it’s not the morning, yet, except on the clock, and the Parse in front of him is warm and trembling and good, and Bitty wants so badly he could cry.

“Yeah, I—I would,” Bitty admits—another confession, or a promise, maybe somehow both—and closes his eyes. “Truth or dare?”

Parse leans down and presses his forehead against Bitty’s. “Truth.”

Bitty opens his eyes. Parse is terrifyingly close—somehow closer, Bitty feels, even though he knows it’s a lie, than when they were kissing. “Why—why do you wanna?”

“I—um.” Parse laughs, shifting his weight a little but not pulling away. “It’s selfish, and weird, and—? I—I mean, it’s—fucking hot, first of all. I’ll admit that. Like, the idea of—but. Also, I—you remember how awful mine was? And I—I just…if I could make it better for you, I—I’d want to.” He takes a breath, blinks slowly, and finishes softly, “I could make it really good for you. I could— _ be _ good.”

Bitty shivers. He can feel the anticipation itching under his skin, a desire so  _ primal _ it hurts and makes him wonder how he lived this long without it, how he’ll survive now that he knows it exists.

“Take me upstairs,” Bitty says—and it’s meant to be a request, a suggestion, some sort of soft benediction proposed between lovers. It’s none of those things. It’s an order, and Parse complies.

Bitty’s breath hitches when Parse lifts him. He wraps his legs around Parse’s waist and buries his face into Parse’s neck, mouthing at the sensitive skin there, finding a spot that makes Parse stumble and groan—and remembers belatedly, when they’re already at the stairs, “Our clothes—”

“Get them later,” Parse begs—and how could Bitty deny him when he’s looking at Bitty so desperately, eyes hungry and eager and his hands trembling from the strain of holding Bitty up—but maybe from something else, too—something not unlike the way Bitty’s own body is shaking with longing.

“Yeah, okay.” Bitty nips at Parse’s earlobe before moving back down to his neck, sucking as hard as he dares to without running the risk of leaving a mark behind.

Parse carries Bitty up the stairs carefully, his apparent composure only betrayed by the erratic rhythm of his breaths, the little moans that fall from his lips whenever Bitty bites at his neck or tugs at his hair. When they reach the landing, Parse presses Bitty up against the wall and kisses him, urgent and needy like it’s been months, years since he’s had the taste of Bitty’s tongue and not moments.

“I’d fuck you right here if you’d let me,” Parse murmurs into the space between their lips, a hastily constructed gap that collapses nearly instantly.

Bitty is terrified by the thought that, just maybe, he would. It’s a heady kind of fear that feels more like pleasure—or that could just be from the way Parse rolls his hips, grinding their cocks together through two tantalizingly thin layers of fabric—as if to punctuate his statement.

“There’s people sleepin’ everywhere,” Bitty reminds him instead.

Parse smirks. “So…no?”

Bitty rolls his eyes. “My room’s  _ right  _ around the corner.”

“I—” Parse catches on the word halfway through and something brooding flashes on his face, but he finishes with an air of helplessness, “—remember.”

Bitty flinches, as much as he can flinch with his back pressed up against the wall and Parse’s hands on his ass. He spends maybe three seconds floundering, and then he makes a decision. “Well,” he tuts with a confidence he in no way, shape or form feels, “you better get me there quick, then, Mr. Parson.”

Parse blinks rapidly, like he’s trying to chase something out of his eyes—the sadness, maybe, that’s been hanging around the edges all night. Then he surges forward and kisses Bitty with a thing nearly like gratitude, and Bitty is left, breathless and panting, with the impression he’s become responsible for the absolution of a crime in the way that mantels are sometimes taken up on accident. Or—not so coincidentally, maybe, but it’s hard to think around Parse’s tongue.

“Okay,” Parse says, much too late and a little unnecessarily, “okay.”

Bitty is endlessly grateful that he forgot to lock his door when he wandered downstairs earlier—since his key is in a jeans pocket a flight of stairs in the wrong direction. Parse manages to get the door open and stumbles inside, dropping Bitty onto his bed with an endearing lack of coordination, and tumbles down on top of him, kissing at his neck.

When Parse lifts his head, he gasps softly. “Oh my God, that’s adorable.”

“What’re you—” Bitty follows Parse’s line of sight and winces. Señor Bun is sitting on his pillows, staring with his button-eyes in a way Bitty tells himself cannot be judgmental. Because his stuffed rabbit is not actually sentient. “Oh. Um—”

“What’s its name?” Parse asks, with—really, a suspicious amount of genuine-sounding interest.

Bitty bites his lip. “Um. Señor Bun?”

“Fucking adorable, shit,” Parse mutters, probably mostly to himself. Louder, and smirking now, he asks, “Well, is Bun a voyeur or should we move him?”

Bitty relaxes a little, and tries not to be charmed by the fact Parse is being so—great about this. It puts an ache in Bitty’s chest he doesn’t know what to do with and, well—it’s not exactly sexy to be caught with a stuffed animal, by a long shot, but it  _ is _ —reassuring, at least indirectly. Because Parse accepts Bitty anyway, is still looking at him like—like he  _ wants  _ him.

“Not his kink,” Bitty answers, offering a timid smile, and Parse laughs with surprise.

Softly, he asks, “Guess he can watch the stars, yeah?” and shifts away to set Bun on the windowsill delicately.

Bitty nods and crawls over to curl up next to Parse on the pillows. They’re quiet for a moment before Bitty ventures, “So…we’re—really doing this?”

Fingers card through Bitty’s hair, scratching gently at his scalp. “If you still wanna.”

“Um. Yeah, I—really do. I just—” Bitty blushes and looks down. “I’m getting nervous? I’m—I’m sorry.”

Parse hums and presses a kiss to Bitty’s forehead. “Don’t be sorry, s’okay. Uh, d’you wanna like, just kiss for a while? Maybe—” the hand in Bitty’s hair slides down, strokes between Bitty’s shoulder blades, caresses his lower back. “—touch each other more? Like, ease back in.”

Bitty nuzzles closer and tilts his head up, comes just short of meeting Parse in a kiss. “Um, yeah, that sounds—really good.”

Parse smiles briefly and closes the distance. He starts slow, soft like their first few kisses downstairs, but it picks up heat quickly and this time his hands find Bitty’s ass, urge him on top. Bitty takes the hint and straddles him, sinking his weight down and grinding his hips. That draws a moan from Parse, who brings a hand around and tucks his fingers into the waistband of Bitty’s boxer-briefs.

“This okay?” he murmurs.

“Y-yeah, I—” Bitty reaches out but hesitates. “Can I—should I—?”

Parse nips at Bitty’s jaw. “Whatever you want, Bits. Promise.”

And, well—Bitty makes it pretty clear what he wants, then. He wraps his hand around Parse’s cock and gasps when Parse does the same to him, letting out a whimper and pressing his face into the pillow. It’s—Lord, it’s so good and this isn’t even what they’re here for, but Bitty could come in his boxers from Parse’s hand alone embarrassingly quickly, he’s sure.

Bitty squirms, thrusting into Parse’s hand and trying to control his breathing, wants to focus on making Parse feel good, drawing out more moans and other little noises he’ll have seared in his brain forever. Their kisses turn sloppy in a way Bitty doesn’t normally like—there’s so much  _ spit _ and that can be kind of gross, but—but Parse makes him feel messy and pried open and like maybe those aren’t the sins he thought they were when he was young. Like maybe Bitty isn’t all pristine parts and carefully beveled edges and like maybe that isn’t what it takes to be—well, to be loved.

Parse doesn’t love Bitty—of course not, not so soon and probably not ever because what exactly does Bitty think this is? But—Parse has love in him. More than Bitty thought before, maybe more than Bitty even believes now, in the part of his brain that isn’t being kissed and touched and, to be honest, thoroughly preoccupied in general. Parse loves—probably loves deeply—and he’s here in this bed pulling Bitty apart the way artists leave copper to patina in the rain.

“I’m, um—I think I’m ready?” Bitty pants, forehead pressed up against Parse’s temple and nose nudging against his cheek.

His eyes are squeezed shut but he can still feel Parse watching him. “Okay. Roll over?”

Bitty listens, rolling off Parse onto his back and, after a moment’s hesitation, slipping his underwear off. Parse flashes him a crooked smile and strips off his boxers too, and then—Lord, they’re both naked for real now and Parse is stunning—kind of literally, because Bitty is captivated, can’t make himself move, can barely breathe. It’s not like Bitty’s never seen someone’s dick before, obviously. He’s even seen hard ones, with the other boys he’s hooked up with. But, well. Parse has an especially nice one, and it’s going to be  _ inside  _ Bitty pretty soon and the thought of that—

“I’d say take a picture,” Parse chirps, “but that’s kinda incriminating, considering.”

Bitty laughs sheepishly, scrubbing a hand over his face and turning his head. “S-sorry.”

“Hey, I didn’t mean it like that.” Parse takes Bitty’s hand and brings it to his mouth, kissing at the fingertips gently. “I, uh. I like the attention.”

Blushing, Bitty looks up and manages a small smile. He brushes his fingers across the edge of Parse’s mouth, down to his jaw.

Parse traces his hand along the outside of Bitty’s thigh and asks, “So, uh—when’s this normally go south for you?”

“Um. It—it depends?” Bitty bites at his lip. “The—the first time, he started, um—putting it in and I—but the next time I didn’t, um. I didn’t even get that far.”

Parse nods, eyebrows bunched up in thought, and kisses at the thin skin of Bitty’s wrist, breath tickling at his pulse point. “S’okay, Bits. Uh, I was thinking—”

“When’d you have time to do that?” Bitty teases.

Parse snorts. “I’m a great multi-tasker. Anyway, uh. I was thinking, maybe it’d help if you came first? Or, like, while I was prepping you. Like, you’d probably feel more relaxed? But, I dunno—how’s your refractory period?”

“Oh,” Bitty squeaks. He’s gone mostly soft from the tension, and remembering how badly this has gone in the past—but thinking about Parse making him come is getting his dick interested again. “Um, it’s—it’s pretty good. I think, um—maybe—you don’t mind?”

“Bits,” Parse whispers, mischief glinting in his eyes. “Can I tell you a secret?” Bitty nods, and Parse leans in, bracketing Bitty with his body and pressing his lips to Bitty’s ear. “I really fucking love sucking dick.”

“Oh,” Bitty says again, feeling a little lightheaded—which might have something to do with the very sudden rush of blood headed south. “That’s nice.”

Bitty feels Parse’s smirk against his ear. A hand trails down his thigh and back up, tracing along his hip and coming to rest on his stomach. “Before or during?”

Bitty closes his eyes and tries to picture having Parse’s mouth around him at the same time fingers are being pumped in and out, working him open to—and God, if it doesn’t seem like that’s how Heaven should feel: irreplaceable and overwhelming and perfect and all the other good things and—

“Before,” Bitty says. His eyelids flutter open in time to catch the smile that flits over Parse’s face before he dips between Bitty’s thighs.

The first touch is light and certain, a deliberate slow brush of lips at the head, Bitty’s dick twitching in a show of renewed interest. The second touch is all-consuming; Parse swallows Bitty down in one motion—made easier by the fact that Bitty’s still only half-hard—and moans in the back of his throat like he’s been done a favor. Bitty cracks his skull back against the pillows and stifles a shout into the meat of his palm.

Bitty’s fully hard by the third touch—the painting of wet heat across his length by a curious tongue, exploring the veins thrumming under Bitty’s skin like maps could be drawn, sculptures carved in homage. No one says a thing but the room is awash in music—the obscene noises of saliva and sucked-back cheeks, the breathy moans and whimpers that fly from Bitty’s throat, the soft sounds of slipping sheets in Bitty’s desperate hands.

“Parse.” Bitty’s voice is nearly a whine—the kind of high-pitched sound that carries through walls and Bitty would have the sense to let his anxiety spike if it wasn’t for the fact he’s mostly focused on the thought,  _ this is the best blowjob I’ll ever have in my life,  _ with a blissed-out haze settled behind his eyes.

It’s possible he has the thought out loud. Parse looks up with twinkling eyes, chuckles around Bitty’s dick, and gets back to work.

“Oh,  _ oh,  _ I—‘m close,” Bitty pants, fighting to keep his hips planted on the bed because he’s pretty sure it’s rude to choke the boy who’s giving you head.

Parse slips a hand off of Bitty’s hip and slides it under his ass, squeezing roughly, fingers just barely brushing down towards his entrance. The movement there is questioning, feather-light in a way that almost tickles, sends the same sort of sudden jolt up through Bitty’s spine but feels—Lord, more like pleasure.

Bitty comes without warning and sobs out a curse halfway through, the best he can manage to organize in his throat. Parse, to his enormous credit, makes a sound that could be either a choking response or a snicker—or maybe some bastardization between the two—and sucks Bitty through anyway.

“Fuck—oh Lord, I’m sorry,” Bitty scrambles to apologize as soon as he’s able, boneless against the mattress and eyes fixed very deliberately on the ceiling.

Parse pulls off with a hum and crawls up to pardon Bitty with a kiss.

“Oh my God,” Bitty whispers, pulling away and wrinkling his nose. “Is  _ that  _ what my come tastes like?”

The laugh that punches out of Parse leaves Bitty feeling warmer than it should. “Not a fan?” he teases. “I kinda like it.”

Bitty sniffs haughtily. “Well, there’s no accountin’ for taste,” he chirps, and kisses Parse deep and filthy anyway.

Soon though, Parse pulls away and asks, “Do you want a minute or should I—?”

“I—I’m good, I think. I, uh—I’ve got lube and stuff in that drawer right there.” Bitty flops his head back down on the pillows and focuses on his breathing. Parse was right—he does feel more relaxed now, and—well, a lot more comfortable with Parse, too. But his nerves are still flaring, because this is the part he’s been worried about and what if he ruins the whole night, and—and he  _ likes  _ Parse and he doesn’t want to let him down, and—

“Bits,” Parse says softly, pressing a kiss to Bitty’s knee, “you’re thinking so loud I can hear it, bud.”

“Oh, um—”

Parse leans his cheek against the same knee. “Would it be better if you opened yourself up? Since you’re comfortable with that?”

Bitty bites his lip and considers. “Um, maybe? But—I think, maybe I should get—get used to you touching me there.”

“Ah, yeah.” Parse quirks a smile. “Hm. What if you started—got yourself used to it, ya know?—and then I joined you?”

There’s something about the way Parse says it—the lilt of his voice, the easy openness—that sends a shiver through Bitty’s bones. He gulps down a breath and says, “Yeah, that—that could work.”

“Awesome.” Parse hands the lube over and Bitty takes it with trembling hands, snapping the lid open and pouring a generous helping onto his finger. Slowly, Bitty presses the pad of his finger into himself, working deeper gently, letting out a soft sigh he barely realizes he’s made.

Parse watches intently, his cheeks pink and lips still wet and plump from use. He’s beautiful, like someone painted him at the foot of Bitty’s bed in watercolor. Like he’ll wash away in the rain if he isn’t wrapped up somewhere safe.

That’s what Bitty’s thinking of when he hits his prostrate and gasps. It feels—different—to be doing this when he’s come already. It’s—a thicker pleasure, almost, seeping up through his toes like a hunger diffusing into his blood as he continues to stroke. He’s fighting to keep his eyes open—nearly gives up, but he wants to see Parse’s face when he whispers, “Okay.”

Parse is bright, warm, pretending to be less eager than he seems to be feeling. His grin is the kind that could drive literary men to poetry. “Yeah?”

In place of a verbal answer, Bitty tries to toss the lube back over—it falls short, and Parse retrieves it with a laugh. Bitty watches, still fingering himself absentmindedly, as Parse prepares a finger and brings it down to Bitty’s entrance, pressing lightly against it.

Bitty sucks in a breath, stills his own movements, and nods. Parse smiles reassuringly and slides his finger inside slowly, careful eyes fixed on Bitty’s face. The whole things is a little surreal feeling—like Bitty’s watching it happen, recording the strange bundle of sensations he feels like he’s taking notes in lecture hall: the brush of Parse’s finger—thicker and rougher—against his own, the stretch as he accommodates the new addition, the way his breath hitches and he hangs on the precipice of falling back or going rigid and suddenly his mind goes blank.

“Hey,” Parse says. He wiggles just a little, the pad of his finger pressing against the back of Bitty’s as if in greeting. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Bitty’s mouth drops open. He blinks. “Oh my God—did you just—oh my  _ God.”  _ And just like that, he’s laughing, the tension slipping from his body in rolls, every inch of him shaking with that hysterical type of wheezing giggling that only ever seems to happen late at night. Parse cracks too, dissolving into snickers and pressing his cheek back against Bitty’s knee. His breath huffs warm against Bitty’s skin.

“You’re—you’re such a  _ dork,”  _ Bitty tells him, “I can’t believe it.”

Parse doesn’t answer right away, just nuzzles himself against Bitty’s leg as his laughter dies down. “Secret’s out. Don’t tell anyone.”

Bitty knows his eyes are going kind of dopey. He can’t bring himself to care. “Promise,” he whispers.

Parse looks over and catches Bitty’s stare. His whole expression mirrors how Bitty feels and it hurts, in ways Bitty couldn’t explain even if he wanted to try, to feel that recognition there. Bitty lets the pain in, draws his breaths in deep so his lungs quiver in time with the ache in his heart and he can pretend it’s a physical thing that haunts him.

Time hangs suspended in that moment forever and then it shatters as suddenly as it froze. Bitty clears his throat and slides his finger out, resting his palm flat on the bed near his thigh. That’s all the encouragement Parse seems to need to take over, working his finger in and out, searching for Bitty’s prostrate and grinning when he finds it and Bitty collapses against the mattress again.

Soon, Parse slips a second finger inside and works on stretching Bitty open a little more, his every stroke setting off lights under Bitty’s eyelids and—and Bitty wants  _ more  _ in a way he’s never wanted before, not with someone else. And he begs for it, fighting to keep his voice down and squirming back against Parse’s fingers, saying, “Please, P-Parse I—I want—harder, more,  _ something please.” _

Parse looks smug, a bit like a cat with a canary—or—or however that saying goes because God knows Bitty isn’t thinking straight anymore, and he’s so handsome Bitty might die just from the look in his pupil-blown eyes. “You sure you can handle more, Bits?”

“C’mon,” Bitty whines, feeling a little petulant and not caring one bit. He scrambles up onto his forearms and reaches a hand out to fist it in Parse’s hair, pull him down into a kiss that might have more teeth than lip.

“Shit,” Parse hisses, “you’re so fucking hot. Fuck.”

Bitty flops back down and Parse follows, chasing with his tongue. “R-really?”

Parse tugs on Bitty’s bottom lip with his teeth before he pulls away—Bitty hears the lube snap open again—and says, “Uh, yeah? Jesus Christ, you’re—” he pauses while his third finger works inside and Bitty whimpers, relishing the new fullness. “You’re incredible. I mean, fuck, I saw you dance earlier, and your body, and—God, you’ve got a fucking mouth on you that like, goes straight to my fucking dick.”

Parse is pumping his fingers the entire time he talks and Bitty’s eyes nearly roll back in his head. He’s hard again—probably has been for a while but he hasn’t even been focusing on that, not really—and everything Parse says makes the ache in his chest hit back harder, because—no one’s made Bitty feel like this in probably forever and God, does it hurt to have things he knows he’s gonna lose.

So Bitty shoves all of that right down and says, “Parse—Parse, I’m—I think I’m ready.”

Bitty’s eyes are squeezed shut but he still feels the kiss coming before it’s on his lips. “I don’t want you to regret this,” Parse murmurs, his voice raw.

“I won’t,” Bitty promises. Not in the way Parse thinks, anyway. “I want you.”

It feels otherworldly, so far removed from the fear and pain Bitty’d felt before. It’s the way pulling a pie out of the oven feels, the long-awaited and inevitable end of a thing hard fought with a practiced hand, so that the things that should have been struggles were not.

Parse’s fingers slide away and Bitty feels empty and the crinkle of torn foil is like a chime in Bitty’s ear. Parse rolls the condom on, giving his dick a few pumps, and spreads lube on top with teeth sunk into his bottom lip; they glint in the light from the window and Bitty wants to trace them with his tongue.

“So, uh—if you ride me you can control how this goes more,” Parse offers hoarsely. “Uh—d’you want that?”

Bitty blinks slowly and licks his lips like it might fix the dryness in his throat. “Yeah, I—yeah.”

His hands are shaking when he climbs into Parse’s lap, eases them both down onto the bed with fingers at his temple, brushing the hair away from his face.

Parse smiles, brings his own hand up to cup Bitty’s cheek and thumb gently at his lips. “Incredible,” he whispers, like somehow he knows that Bitty had already forgotten. His free hand comes down to grip the base of his dick and help Bitty position himself to sink down.

It takes a second to get lined up properly and a few more to actually work Parse inside, and then the head pops in and the air punches out of Bitty’s lungs. It’s—well, bigger than fingers, obviously, but also solid and—and  _ heavy  _ in a way Bitty’s not sure fingers could really ever be, and Parse is barely inside him but God,  _ God  _ he feels so full and it doesn’t hurt yet and maybe it won’t and—

“Bits?” Parse’s tone is gentle, laced with concern.

“I’m okay,” Bitty says—and means it. “Just need a minute, hun.”

Parse hums and tilts his chin up; Bitty takes the hint and reaches down for a kiss. The familiar sensation—as strange as that feels, given how short a time he’s been kissing Parse in the grand scheme of things—is grounding, and Bitty stays locked against Parse’s mouth while he lowers himself down farther.

The slide of Parse inside him, the way Parse is breathing harshly and panting out curses between kisses—it’s nearly too much already and when he gets himself fully seated, Bitty nuzzles himself against Parse’s neck and stays there. He whispers, with something approaching disbelief, “It doesn’t hurt.”

Parse’s laugh isn’t entirely a happy sound—melancholy tinges it, maybe relief. His trails a hand down Bitty’s back, stroking in absentminded comfort. “I’m glad, Bits.”

“It feels good,” Bitty—doesn’t admit, because he’s done nothing worthy of confession. Bitty says it, without shame for maybe the first time, without wondering if the thousand things coursing through his veins are deserved or pious or requiring penance—because he feels them and they are his and his alone to share with Parse, who trembles under him with hands like charged wires and a smile-shaped kiss pressing into his neck.

“Yeah, it—it feels good for me too,” Parse tells him, sending sparks into Bitty’s tendons, voice gone a little giddy.

Bitty nods, still pressed against Parse every place he can manage, and starts to move. Parse curses, intensely and creatively, but all Bitty manages is a moan that he buries into Parse’s shoulder, teeth sunk in a little like he’ll float away otherwise.

“Fuck,  _ Jesus.  _ You feel so—so fucking good, Bitty,” Parse pants, letting Bitty set a rhythm before hitching his hips up in a movement that makes Bitty sob with pleasure. “Fuck—fucking hell.”

_ “Parse,”  _ Bitty whines, and he has more words he’d say if he could but it’s too much, so perfect and Bitty feels full—more than full—like he’s been unfinished, walking around with loose parts and he’s just now been patched up the way he’s meant to be. “Parse, I—”

Parse brings a hand up to Bitty’s cheek again. “Kent. Will you—call me Kent?”

“Kent,” Bitty pants, the name strange and perfect on his lips. “Kent.”

They kiss, break away with lips seeking neck or collarbone or shoulder, kiss again. Kent has a hand on Bitty’s hip gripped tight and Bitty likes how it’s almost hard enough to hurt.

“I know why people love this now,” Bitty whispers. “Know why they want it all the time.” He’s not sure if he means the sex or the way Kent’s eyes look like liquid smoke that Bitty could suffocate in and be left feeling sorry he could only die once. Maybe he means both. Maybe they’re the same thing.

“Close—are you close?” Kent asks, bucking up into Bitty more erratically, hand slipping from Bitty’s face to join the other on his hips.

Bitty fists himself and tries to stroke in time with their thrusts. He moans, sinking his face down into the pillow. “Y-yeah, are—?”

“Christ, yeah, I—” Kent cuts off in a whine and his hands go vice-tight on Bitty’s hips as he turns his head to catch Bitty in a kiss, sloppy and desperate and so perfect that it rips Bitty’s orgasm right out of him, sparks tearing through every nerve in his body, catching fire in his gut as he spurts come onto Kent’s stomach.

“Kent,” Bitty sobs. There are tears pricking at his eyes from the force of it or maybe the loss. “I—I’m—oh God—”

Kent’s arms come up and wrap around Bitty’s back, tug him down so they’re crushed together across every inch of skin. “I know,” he soothes. “I know. Me too.”

They lay there, breathing settling and bodies quivering to rest, until Bitty finds the courage to push up onto his forearms and look Kent in the eye. Kent smiles up at him, seeming nothing but sleepy and sated, and a tension Bitty wasn’t consciously carrying dissipates. Wincing, Bitty slides Kent out of him and rolls off to the side, barely avoiding going straight off the bed.

“That was—wow.”

“Yeah,” Kent agrees, pulling his condom off and tying it in a knot before chucking it at the trashcan across the room. It misses. Bitty can’t muster the energy to care. “Uh, where should I get cleaned up?”

“Oh, I can nab you a wash cloth.” Bitty worries at his lip. “Um. Unless—unless you’re not staying.”

Kent sits up fully with a quiet grunt. “I, uh—I want to? If you—if you want me to, I mean.”

Something pleasant flutters in Bitty’s stomach. “I want you to.”

Kent brightens instantly, running a hand through his sweat-drenched hair and grinning broadly. “Alright.”

“Be back soon,” Bitty promises, hopping into a pair of underwear—Kent’s, he’s actually pretty sure—and bustling out of the room. He creeps downstairs first to snag their clothes and, blessedly, finds all the frogs sleeping where he left them. Then, he rinses himself off in the bathroom and wets a washcloth to bring back for Kent.

Kent is sprawled on the bed again when Bitty walks in. The only indication he moved at all is Señor Bun, who’s tucked under his arm now, rescued from the windowsill. A lump forms in Bitty’s throat that he doesn’t bother fighting, just purses his lips around it and crawls under the covers to snuggle.

“Thanks, Bits,” Kent says. He sets the cloth on Bitty’s desk when he’s done with it and pulls Bitty against his chest, burying his nose into Bitty’s hair.

“Welcome,” Bitty mumbles, breathing in deeply and letting his eyes flutter shut. Kent is warm and solid next to him, his arm curled protectively against Bitty’s back, and Bitty—feels so utterly at peace that he could cry. There are dark things hovering somewhere in the back of his brain, he knows. Worries about the morning, about Kent leaving tomorrow and about whether or not Bitty should want him to stay.

That all feels far away right now, though, and Kent’s voice is fond and close when he whispers, “G’night, Bits,” and it’s enough, for now—more than enough—to whisper goodnight back and mean it.

 

~*~

 

Bitty wakes up to the early morning sun in his eyes and fingers carding through his hair. He stretches languidly and yawns, feeling the joins pop in his back and his skin brush against the warm expanse of a body next to him. He feels sore, squirming a little against the sheets—but a good, pleasant kind—like after a workout when his body’s been pushed and tested and loved. When he opens his eyes, he finds Kent looking down at him.

Kent’s eyes are like sea glass in the light, too pale to be blue or green, existing somewhere in between in a color all their own. He nuzzles against Bitty’s cheek with his nose and murmurs, “Hey, truth or dare?”

Bitty laughs, an airy, breathless sound. “Um, truth?”

There’s a moment of quiet filled by the wicked grin spreading across Kent’s face. He cups Bitty’s cheek in his hand, brushes his thumb across the skin in a way that will probably always make Bitty shiver.

“Wanna do that again?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Bittyparse is my not-so-secret OTP, come scream with me about them [on Tumblr <3](http://www.yoursummerfrost.tumblr.com)


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